


The still and lucky miles

by lbmisscharlie



Series: Cinnamon [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, M/M, Retirement, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 07:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/859498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The urn was light in his hands, like the angular jut of Sherlock’s bones, like his sure-footed movement even in his last years, like the incandescent buzzing of his beloved bees. </i>
</p><p>Imogen and John say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The still and lucky miles

**Author's Note:**

> Since I just posted the _first_ chronological story in this series, here I give you the _last_. Simply the last of their timeline, though, not the last story!
> 
> Britpick by the wonderful [yalublyutebya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yalublyutebya)
> 
> Title is from the WH Auden poem:
> 
> Warm are the still and lucky miles,  
> White shores of longing stretch away,  
> A light of recognition fills  
> The whole great day, and bright  
> The tiny world of lovers’ arms.
> 
> Silence invades the breathing wood  
> Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep,  
> Now greenly falls the learned shade  
> Across the sleeping brows  
> And stirs their secret to a smile.
> 
> Restored! Returned! The lost are bourne  
> On seas of shipwreck home at last:  
> See! In a fire of praising burns  
> The dry dumb past, and we  
> Our life-day long shall part no more.

The ceremony was quiet, less than he deserved and more than he would have desired. The faces in the pews were familiar, and not. 

They’d buried him last time, Mycroft’s arrangements, but Sherlock preferred a more immediate return to the biological world, and Mycroft was no longer there to protest, so cremated he had been. A small knot of them had done this before, mourned him, with John as their leader, and they sit together in a row in the front, at Imogen’s insistence. Molly Hooper, no secrets this time; Camilla Edwards, retired two towns over and a still-frequent contributor to Sherlock’s experiments; Violet, who kisses Imogen’s cheek and holds one hand while Robert holds the other; Sally Donovan, close to retirement herself.

Sally will never advance past DI, just as Lestrade before her: either the curse of Sherlock’s brief brush with infamy, or the administration’s good sense to keep those who worked best with Sherlock in the field. Sally’s son and daughter-in-law were with her, two toddler boys keeping their hands full. 

The enclave missed a few, of course, as was wont to happen as years passed. Mrs Hudson, Mycroft, and Greg, whose decades of stress and coffee and hard-nosed dedication had caught up his heart five years hence. Harry, whose liver had recovered from the drinking only to fall prey to the cancer that lurked in her pancreas. John had visited Abigail shortly after Sherlock’s death, and she mourned him when lucid. Maggie was in Japan, couldn’t get away. She had had delivered to John and Imogen each a Venus flytrap; John laughed when he realized and put it in a place of pride on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, where he could watch it stretch its mouth to the sun.

The rest of the small church filled with more recent acquaintances, past clients, and the townsfolk for whom John and Sherlock’s slow ascent from the valley surrounding their cottage was a familiar sight.

Imogen stood, her husband’s hand wrapped around hers until the last moment; she drew such strength from Robert, and seeing their clinging bond, John squeezed his own trembling hand, fisting it against the side of the pew. Imogen stepped to John, looping her elbow in his so he could lean against her, nearly imperceptibly, up the steps. She stood at his shoulder, still a head taller, and he drew strength from the press of her arm. 

He hadn’t wanted to give the eulogy, to try and put into futile words forty-five years of their life, lived. He did anyway, with their daughter at his side. He’d done it once before, after all, and the words remained the same.

“Sherlock Holmes was the best and wisest man I have ever known,” he began.

++

The urn was light in his hands, like the angular jut of Sherlock’s bones, like his sure-footed movement even in his last years, like the incandescent buzzing of his beloved bees. Not at all like the heaviness of his body next to John’s each night, or the surprising strength of his right uppercut, or his solid chest, offering comforting embraces well into Imogen’s teens, and beyond. It couldn’t possibly hold all that he was.

John tucked it into the crook of his arm, fingertips on its cold metal base, and took up his cane. Hands thus occupied, he had merely to endure a few sympathetic nods of the head, shoulder clasps, and one darted hug from Molly, who tucked into his side with surprising spryness and kissed his cheek, her own tears brushing his skin, before pulling away quickly.

Robert, bless him, managed the small crowd, and John and Imogen settled into her sensible Peugeot for the short ride to the cottage. 

He needed help out, not too proud to ask, but Imogen knew without his words and offered her hand. They walked together into the garden, glorious under the springtime firmament. The plants, untended since Sherlock’s – since – had already begun to break the bonds of cultivation; mint stretching its tendrils and tomatoes climbing over their cages, Sherlock’s castor and rhododendron and hyacinths stretching untended leaves to the sky. The cherry tree had blossomed and littered the small lawn with its pale pink offerings. 

John’s shoulder twinged, the wound a quiet pain under the more demanding ache of arthritis. Imogen rubbed it briefly, and walked down the garden path an unusual half-step behind him. Far at the back, in the shade of the valley, Sherlock’s hives remained. Bees, their lives going on and on without their keeper, buzzed gently around them. John’s stomach felt hollow.

His hand shook as he unscrewed the lid to the urn, of age rather than injury; he’d had enough excitement in his life to keep it still for eternity, were that all that caused the tremors these days. Imogen took the lid from him, cupping her hand around his, and he scooped his fingers inside, shifting and settling, touching Sherlock for the last time. True to his nature, Sherlock settled into John’s very being, dusting his cells and owning his skin.

He released the ash to the garden, and Imogen followed as, silently, they laid Sherlock to rest.

He opened his fist and felt the ash picked up by the sharp spring breeze. The fine powder settled in the whorls of his fingerprints, dusting his liver-spotted hands. Near his shoulder, a bee buzzed, the quick drone the soundtrack of his last decade. One more handful each and the man that brought them together was gone, scattered in the hives and the grasses, alight on the brisk wind he had liked so much. 

Holding the urn in one hand, John slipped his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. She’d long been half a head taller than him, even more so now that his shoulders stooped, spine compressed with the years. He’d left his cane behind, determined despite the pain to walk with his husband one last time. As they walked back to the house, she supported him; proud though he may be, they both needed this, this shared weight. 

Inside, he settled into his armchair, not the same one from when he had first moved into Baker Street, nor its father’s day replacement, required after an inadvertent beating with a field hockey stick. An experiment, a teenaged Imogen had assured him, the innocent look on her face carefully studied. Newer, this chair had arrived at the cottage when they moved in, and John hadn’t needed to look at the receipt to know whose hands picked it out.

Imogen made tea by rote, the movements familiar to her hands from decades of repetition; John remembered helping her struggle with the just-boiled kettle when she was four, five, taking her teabag out when it had steeped half-way so she wouldn’t overload it with sugar. He remembered how Sherlock took his, sweet and black, and the brief period John had tried to switch to green tea after their first scare with Sherlock’s heart. Sherlock had painstakingly replaced every green tea sachet with English Breakfast, resealing the packets and lining them up in the box.

Bringing John a very large mug – milky with a bit of honey, a more recent indulgence – and a plate of biscuits, Imogen cupped her hands around John’s as she passed over the tea. Her fingers were long and spindly, just beginning to show hints of rheumatism around the knuckles, and the tips just touched his wrists. 

She returned for her own and, as she had done thousands of times over the years, Imogen settled onto the floor at his feet, legs tucked to one side and forearms resting lightly on his knees. When she smiled sadly, her eyes crinkled up just like Sherlock’s; her hair, silvered at the temples, remained mostly dark just as his had well past middle age. John had gone grey rather quickly, large patches appearing in that first year at Baker Street; he often teased his husband and daughter that their combined antics were the cause. 

Around them, the air was full of his absence.

“I miss him,” Imogen said, breaking the silence. He rubbed her shoulder; she leaned into his touch, cheek brushing his knuckles. “I keep thinking about what he would say to every conversation, to every thought I –”

“Me too,” John admitted. He’d still said good morning when he walked into the sitting room every morning since, still had made enough tea and toast and dinner for them both. It was like when Imogen left for university, adjusting to their reduced numbers, only ever so worse. 

“Robert believes in heaven,” she said. “I wonder if that’s easier.” John inhaled through his nose and contemplated; an afterlife would be appealing, but – 

“It might be,” he said, honestly. She leaned her head back, looked at him upside-down. 

“It’s not –” she started, then stopped, exhaling. Her breath ruffled her fringe. “It’s not like it was the first time,” she said, finally, voice small. John cupped her cheek.

“It’s not,” he agreed, for it wasn’t; it was a lingering loneliness, a habit unfulfilled, a quiet cottage and a nearing end. Before, it had been – final. So it seemed. Before, it had been the years stretching ahead of them with a missing gap: all the firsts Imogen had yet to experience, first day of secondary school, then university, first case solved on her own, first work of art in a gallery, first date, first paper published, first patent. 

First moment she looked for Sherlock and found only John, then that moment repeated, again and again.

Before, they had put him in the ground, and all the words said were empty, for they spoke only of all the years he would not live. Before, they had been fighting for their own existence within the everyday silences of being left behind.

“Did you ever forgive him?” she asked, turning enough to look at him right-side-up. She had new creases in the corners of her eyes, lines he’d never seen before. 

“I –” John looked out, away. “I loved him,” he said, realizing that wasn’t quite an answer. “And you. I grew to understand his choice.”

“I didn’t,” she said, and though she’d been stoic for the three long days since she arrived at the cottage, all through the funeral dry-eyed and solemn, tears began to well in the corners of her eyes. “I couldn’t forgive him for – not really.”

“It’s okay,” John said, knowing it was. “I don’t think he ever expected you to. I don’t know if he ever forgave himself.”

She inhaled sharply. “It’s part of being a parent,” John said softly; he’d have done the same in Sherlock’s position, no matter the pain caused. He would break Imogen if it meant saving her. “You still loved him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” she said, sharply, and John shrugged. 

“Well then.”

She sighed, scraped her hands across her eyes. “How did you know you loved him?” she asked, finally, softly. “In the beginning, I mean. Why did you –” Cutting herself off, she bit at her lower lip; John feared she adopted that gesture from him.

“Why did I stay? Because of you, of course. Well,” he amended, “both of you, truly. But I think I loved you first. Or, at least, I loved him – who he was – because of you.” The weight of the day settled on his shoulders, the truth of decades, and for a brief moment he was standing in the kitchen of 221b again, a four-year-old Imogen, gamine and wide-eyed, looking up at him with the cheeky innocence a childhood with Sherlock couldn’t help but create. He’d been like a child himself, impetuous and full of wonder, and he’d shown John a new way of seeing all the sharp edges of the world.

“You always followed him,” she said, quietly, mouth against his knee. He rubbed the nape of her neck. “Always.”

“Not always,” John contradicted. “Most of the time I was following you. You both just always went the same way.” She laughed and then she was crying, sniffling against the leg of his trousers and tears tracking down her cheeks. He cupped the back of her neck, stroking the short curls with his thumb. “Come on, love, get it out.” 

She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms, and struck with memories, John tugged at her elbows until she awkwardly manoeuvred herself to his lap. “I’m far too big for this,” she said, sniffling.

“Nonsense,” John said and tucked her head up against his chest like he’d done so many times before. 

“You can’t –” she started in a small voice, then swallowed. “You can’t follow him this time, not yet.”

“What?”

“I’m not ready to – I can’t lose you both.”

“Oh –” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Too skinny by half, her father’s daughter, even with the comfortable weight of middle age, and he made a note to send her home with some of the casseroles the neighbours had already begun dropping off. “I’m eighty years old, Immie, I don’t really have control over it.”

Her laugh was wet, half a sob, and she burrowed her hand into his shirt, fisting the material in her fingers. “I just mean – you can’t give up. I still need my dad.” He nodded, chin brushing the top of her head.

“When have you ever known me to give up? Damn stubborn I am; always have been.”

She gave a great, shuddering sigh. “That’s true.” Pulling away, she wiped her tear-reddened eyes; it smeared her mascara, and John rubbed at the smudge with the pad of his thumb. 

“I’m sticking around,” he said, and she nodded. “I’m still hale and hearty yet.” She smiled and stood; he immediately missed her warmth, for even in distress she was a comfort. As if sensing it, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. 

Robert’s knock sounded at the door; John hadn’t heard the car arrive, but a glance at his watch showed they’d been on their own for two hours now. He followed Imogen in from the hallway, a gentle resignation to the set of his shoulders, and waited as John pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane.

Imogen leaned into her husband’s slight form. A taciturn, clever chemist, Robert had less charmed Imogen than stuck around until she found she couldn’t be without him. Though not one to waste words and never one for big romantic gestures, he nevertheless looked at Imogen like she was the only person in the world. It was that gaze more than anything that had convinced John he was right for their daughter; less reverential than interested, it was the look of someone constantly expecting to be surprised. John remembered that look – as both the giver and receiver. 

“John,” he said, shaking his hand. Robert wasn’t one for effusive gestures, which John didn’t mind. “We’ll be back at the weekend,” he said, sturdily. “Anything we can bring up from town?” 

“Biscuits,” John said, as he always did. Imogen brought up packets and packets every time she visited – he’d forgotten why, or when it started. “Custard creams and the little coconut ones Sherlock –” he stopped, swallowed, and Robert nodded gravely. 

“We’ll bring you some suppers, too,” Robert added. “Easy things, for the microwave.”

“I’m hardly an invalid,” John protested, and Imogen rolled her eyes.

“Don’t be difficult, Dad,” she said, and John had to suppress a smile. She’d never fussed so much until she met Robert, endless years of self-sufficiency making way for a tutting sort of mothering that reminded John of no one so much as Mrs Hudson. Robert was just the same, though more frank with his concern, and John occasionally – very occasionally, for it was her life, and one well-lived – had regret that they had never had children. He wouldn’t have minded a grandchild or two, he thought, but his life had always been more than full enough.

“Go on,” he said, waving the end of his cane at them. “I’ll see you at the weekend. Now leave an old man in peace.” Imogen narrowed her eyes but smacked a kiss to his cheek and said her goodbyes. 

He watched them drive down the lane from the kitchen window. As the car rounded the corner and the sound of the engine fell away, he took a deep, slow breath in. He made a second cup of tea, just one, for him, and settled into the still and longing silence.


End file.
